Pétillant-naturel—pét-nat for short—is both a sexy debutante in today's wine world and a form of sparkling wine that predates Champagne by centuries.

It’s called pétillant naturel (meaning naturally sparkling), and it’s a sexy debutante in the wine world. Except that pét-nat, as it’s called, is centuries older than the process that produces Champagne.

Pét-nat is in vogue for a few reasons. One is that it’s part of the natural-wine movement, which is based on making wine with a minimum of chemical and technological interventions, often from organic grapes. Another is that pét-nat tends to be about 2 percent lower in alcohol than traditional sparkling wines. A third is that it has the caché of being a niche product with its own distinctive qualities, varying with the grapes used.

In the Champagne method, wine that has finished its initial fermentation in tanks, becoming a still wine, is filtered, siphoned into bottles, and dosed with fresh yeast and sugar that triggers a new round of fermentation, producing CO2 bubbles.

In pét-nat, wine still undergoing initial fermentation in tanks is bottled; the remaining yeast continues to carbonate the wine. Filtering is optional.

Sean Comninos, winemaker at William Heritage Winery in Gloucester County, New Jersey’s only producer of pét-nat, says younger drinkers don’t mind the hazy look of an unfiltered pét-nat and are more open to what he calls the “fun, funky and playful” characteristics of the style.

Morristown native and one-time punk rocker Brendan Tracey now makes wine in the Loire Valley region of France. Of his 2015 Outsider Brut Rosé, a pét-nat made from 100 percent chenin blanc grapes, he says, “the yeast flavor comes out as toasted bread. You don’t get flavors like that in the Champagne method.”